by the vanishment of young Godfrey, son to Henri, the Comte. A searching
party, headed by the frantic father, invaded the cottage of the
sorcerers and there came upon old Michel Mauvais, busy over a huge and
violently boiling cauldron. Without certain cause, in the ungoverned
madness of fury and despair, the Comte laid hands on the aged wizard,
and ere he released his murderous hold his victim was no more. Meanwhile
joyful servants were proclaiming aloud the finding of young Godfrey in a
distant and unused chamber of the great edifice, telling too late that
poor Michel had been killed in vain. As the Comte and his associates
turned away from the lowly abode of the alchemists, the form of Charles
Le Sorcier appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of the
menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he seemed at
first unmoved at his father's fate. Then, slowly advancing to meet the
Comte, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that ever
afterward haunted the house of C----.
"May ne'er a noble of thy murd'rous line
Survive to reach a greater age than thine!"
spake he, when, suddenly leaping backwards into the black wood, he drew
from his tunic a phial of colourless liquid which he threw in the face
of his father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the
night. The Comte died without utterance, and was buried the next day,
but little more than two and thirty years from the hour of his birth. No
trace of the assassin could be found, though relentless bands of
peasants scoured the neighboring woods and the meadow-land around the
hill.
Thus time and the want of a reminder dulled the memory of the curse in
the minds of the late Comte's family, so that when Godfrey, innocent
cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an
arrow whilst hunting, at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts
save those of grief at his demise. But when, years afterward, the next
young Comte, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field from no
apparent cause, the peasants told in whispers that their seigneur had
but lately passed his thirty-second birthday when surprised by early
death. Louis, son to Robert, was found drowned in the moat at the same
fateful age, and thus down through the centuries ran the ominous
chronicle; Henris, Roberts, Antoines, and Armands snatched from happy
and virtuous lives when a little below the age of their unfortunate
ancestor at his murder.
That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made
certain to me by the words which I read. My life, previously held at
small value, now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and
deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated
as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I
laboured as in the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and
young Charles themselves in the acquisition of demonological and
alchemical learning. Yet read as I might, in no manner could I account
for the strange curse upon my line. In unusually rational moments, I
would even go so far as to seek a natural explanation, attributing the
early deaths of my ancestors to the sinister Charles Le Sorcier and his
heirs; yet having found upon careful inquiry that there were no known
descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back to my occult studies,
and once more endeavour to find a spell that would release my house from
its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely resolved. I should
never wed, for since no other branches of my family were in existence, I
might thus end the curse with myself.
As I drew near the age of thirty, old Pierre was called to the land
beyond. Alone I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard about
which he had loved to wander in life. Thus was I left to ponder on
myself as the only human creature within the great fortress, and in my
utter solitude my mind began to cease its vain protest against the
impending doom, to become almost reconciled to the fate which so many of
my ancestors had met. Much of my time was now occupied in the
exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls and towers of the old
chateau, which in youth fear had caused me to shun, and some of which
old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human foot for over
four centuries. Strange and awsome were many of the objects I
encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with
the rot of long dampness met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never
before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their bony
and uncanny wings on all sides of the otherwise untenanted gloom.
Of my exact age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most careful
record, for each movement of the pendulum of the massive clock in the
library tolled off so much more of my doomed existence. At length I
approached that time which I had so long viewed with apprehension. Since
most of my ancestors had been seized some little while before they
reached the exact age of the Comte Henri at his end, I was every moment
on the watch for the coming of the unknown death. In what strange form
the curse should overtake me, I knew not; but I was resolved at least
that it should not find me a cowardly or a passive victim. With new
vigour I applied myself to my examination of the old chateau and its
contents.
It was upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in the
deserted portion of the castle, less than a week before that fatal hour
which I felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth, beyond
which I could have not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw
breath, that I came upon the culminating event of my whole life. I had
spent the better part of the morning in climbing up and down half ruined
staircases in one of the most dilapidated of the ancient turrets. As the
afternoon progressed, I sought the lower levels, descending into what
appeared to be either a mediaeval place of confinement, or a more
recently excavated storehouse for gunpowder. As I slowly traversed the
nitre-encrusted passageway at the foot of the last staircase, the paving
became very damp, and soon I saw by the light of my flickering torch
that a blank, water-stained wall impeded my journey. Turning to retrace
my steps, my eye fell upon a small trap-door with a ring, which lay
directly beneath my feet. Pausing, I succeeded with difficulty in
raising it, whereupon there was revealed a black aperture, exhaling
noxious fumes which caused my torch to sputter, and disclosing in the
unsteady glare the top of a flight of stone steps. As soon as the torch,
which I lowered into the repellent depths, burned freely and steadily, I
commenced my descent. The steps were many, and led to a narrow
stone-flagged passage which I knew must be far underground. This passage
proved of great length, and terminated in a massive oaken door,
dripping with the moisture of the place, and stoutly resisting all my
attempts to open it. Ceasing after a time my efforts in this direction,
I had proceeded back some distance toward the steps, when there suddenly
fell to my experience one of the most profound and maddening shocks
capable of reception by the human mind. Without warning, =I heard the
heavy door behind me creak slowly open upon its rusted hinges=. My
immediate sensations are incapable of analysis. To be confronted in a
place as thoroughly deserted as I had deemed the old castle with
evidence of the presence of man or spirit, produced in my brain a horror
of the most acute description. When at last I turned and faced the seat
of the sound, my eyes must have started from their orbits at the sight
that they beheld. There in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human
figure. It was that of a man clad in a skull-cap and long mediaeval
tunic of dark colour. His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible
and intense black hue, and of incredible profusion. His forehead, high
beyond the usual dimensions; his cheeks, deep sunken and heavily lined
with wrinkles; and his hands, long, claw-like and gnarled, were of such
a deathly, marble-like whiteness as I have never elsewhere seen in man.
His figure, lean to the proportions of a skeleton, was strangely bent
and almost lost within the voluminous folds of his peculiar garment. But
strangest of all were his eyes; twin caves of abysmal blackness;
profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of
wickedness. These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their
hatred, and rooting me to the spot whereon I stood. At last the figure
spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me through with its dull
hollowness and latent malevolence. The language in which the discourse
was clothed was that debased form of Latin in use amongst the more
learned men of the Middle Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged
researches into the works of the old alchemists and demonologists. The
apparition spoke of the curse which had hovered over my house, told me
of my coming end, dwelt on the wrong perpetrated by my ancestor against
old Michel Mauvais, and gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Sorcier.
He told me how the young Charles had escaped into the night, returning
in after years to kill Godfrey the heir with an arrow just as he
approached the age which had been his father's at his assassination; how
he had secretly returned to the estate and established himself, unknown,
in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed
the hideous narrator; how he had seized Robert, son of Godfrey, in a
field, forced poison down his throat and left him to die at the age of
thirty-two, thus maintaining the foul provisions of his vengeful curse.
At this point I was left to imagine the solution of the greatest mystery
of all, how the curse had been fulfilled since that time when Charles Le
Sorcier must in the course of nature have died, for the man digressed
into an account of the deep alchemical studies of the two wizards,
father and son, speaking most particularly of the researches of Charles
Le Sorcier concerning the elixir which should grant to him who partook
of it eternal life and youth.
His enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible
eyes the hatred that had at first so haunted them, but suddenly the
fiendish glare returned, and with a shocking sound like the hissing of a
serpent, the stranger raised a glass phial with the evident intent of
ending my life as had Charles Le Sorcier, six hundred years before,
ended that of my ancestor. Prompted by some preserving instinct of
self-defense, I broke through the spell that had hitherto held me
immovable, and flung my now dying torch at the creature who menaced my
existence. I heard the phial break harmlessly against the stones of the
passage as the tunic of the strange man caught fire and lit the horrid
scene with a ghastly radiance. The shriek of fright and impotent malice
emitted by the would-be assassin proved too much for my already shaken
nerves, and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total faint.
When at last my senses returned, all was frightfully dark, and my mind
remembering what had occurred, shrank from the idea of beholding more;
yet curiosity overmastered all. Who, I asked myself, was this man of
evil, and how came he within the castle walls? Why should he seek to
avenge the death of poor Michel Mauvais, and how had the curse been
carried on through all the long centuries since the time of Charles Le
Sorcier? The dread of years was lifted off my shoulders, for I knew that
he whom I had felled was the source of all my danger from the curse; and
now that I was free, I burned with the desire to learn more of the
sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries, and made of my
own youth one long-continued nightmare. Determined upon further
exploration, I felt in my pockets for flint and steel, and lit the
unused torch which I had with me. First of all, the new light revealed
the distorted and blackened form of the mysterious stranger. The hideous
eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and entered the
chamber beyond the Gothic door. Here I found what seemed much like an
alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile of a shining
yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the torch. It may
have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it, for I was strangely
affected by that which I had undergone. At the farther end of the
apartment was an opening leading out into one of the many wild ravines
of the dark hillside forest. Filled with wonder, yet now realizing how
the man had obtained access to the chateau, I proceeded to return. I had
intended to pass by the remains of the stranger with averted face, but
as I approached the body, I seemed to hear emanating from it a faint
sound, as though life were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast, I turned to
examine the charred and shrivelled figure on the floor.
Then all at once the horrible eyes, blacker even than the seared face in
which they were set, opened wide with an expression which I was unable
to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame words which I could not
well understand. Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again
I fancied that the words "years" and "curse" issued from the twisted
mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected
speech. At my evident ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once
more flashed malevolently at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to
be, I trembled as I watched him.
Suddenly the wretch, animated with his last burst of strength, raised
his hideous head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then, as I remained,
paralyzed with fear, he found his voice and in his dying breath screamed
forth those words which have ever afterward haunted my days and my
nights. "Fool," he shrieked, "can you not guess my secret? Have you no
brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long
centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon your house? Have I not told
you of the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of
Alchemy was solved? I tell you, it is I! I! =I! that have lived for six
hundred years to maintain my revenge=, FOR I AM CHARLES LE SORCIER!"
H. P. LOVECRAFT.
THE UNITED AMATEUR MARCH 1917
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC CRITICISM
=The Conservative= for October opens with Miss Olive G. Owen's tuneful
lines on "The Mocking Bird." Of the quality of Miss Owen's poetry it is
scarce necessary to speak; be it sufficient to say that the present
piece ranks among her best. In the intense fervour of the sentiment, and
the felicitous choice of the imagery, the touch of the born poet is
alike shown. Through an almost inexcusable editorial mistake of our own,
the first word of this poem is erroneously rendered. Line 1 should read:
"=Where= Southern moonlight softly falls."
"Old England and the Hyphen" is an attempt of the present critic to
demonstrate why relations between the United States and Mother England
must necessarily be closer than those between the States and any of the
really foreign powers. So patent and so inevitable is the essential
unity of the Anglo-Saxon world that such an essay as this ought really
to be superfluous; but its practical justification is found in the silly
clamour of those Anglophobes who are unfortunately permitted to reside
within our borders. "Insomnia," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is a
remarkable piece of verse whose dark turns of fancy are almost worthy of
a Poe. The grotesque tropes, the cleverly distorted images, the bizarre
atmosphere, and ingeniously sinister repetitions all unite to produce
one of the season's most notable poems. Each of the stanzas is vibrant
with the hideous, racking turmoil of the insomnious mind. "Prussianism,"
by William Thomas Harrington, is a concise and lucid essay on a timely
subject, reviewing ably the cause and responsibility of the present war.
It is especially valuable at this season of incoherent peace
discussion, for it explodes very effectively that vague, brainless
"neutrality" which prompts certain pro-German pacifists to cry for peace
before the normal and final settlement of Europe's troubles shall have
been attained by the permanent annihilation of the Prussian military
machine. "Twilight," by Chester Pierce Munroe, is a beautiful bit of
poetic fancy and stately phraseology. Mr. Munroe, a Rhode Islander
transplanted to the mountains of North Carolina, is acquiring all the
grace and delicacy of the native Southern bard, while retaining that
happy conservatism of expression which distinguishes his work from that
of most contemporary poets. Callously modern indeed must be he who would
wish Mr. Munroe's quaintly euphonious lines transmuted into the
irritatingly abrupt and barren phraseology of the day. "The Bond
Invincible," by David H. Whittier, is a short story of great power and
skilful construction, suggesting Poe's "Ligeia" in its central theme.
The plot is developed with much dexterity, and the climax comes so
forcibly and unexpectedly upon the reader, that one cannot but admire
Mr. Whittier's mastery of technique. Certain overnice critics may
possibly object to the tale, as containing incidents which no one
survives to relate; but when we reflect that Poe has similarly written a
story without survivors, ("The Masque of the Red Death") we can afford
to applaud without reservation. The complete absence of slang and of
doubtful grammar recommends this tale as a model to other amateur
fiction-writers. "Respite" is a lachrymose lament in five stanzas by the
present critic. The metre is regular, which is perhaps some excuse for
its creation and publication. "By the Waters of the Brook," by Rev.
Eugene B. Kuntz, D. D., is one of the noblest amateur poems of the year.
While the casual reader may find in the long heptameter lines a want of
sing-song facility; the true lover of the Nine pauses in admiration at
the deep flowing nobility of the rhyme. The quick rippling of the brook
is duplicated within each line, rather than from line to line. The
imagery and phraseology are of the sort which only Dr. Kuntz can
fashion, and are rich in that exalted pantheism of fancy which comes to
him who knows Nature in her wilder and more rugged moods and aspects.
"The Pool," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, contains an elusive hint of the
terrible and the supernatural which gives it high rank as poetry. Mrs.
Jordan has two distinct, yet related, styles in verse. One of these
mirrors all the joy and buoyant happiness of life, whilst the other
reflects that undertone of grimness which is sometimes felt through the
exterior of things. The kinship betwixt these styles lies in their
essentially fanciful character, as distinguished from the tiresomely
commonplace realism of the average modern rhymester. Another bit of
sinister psychology in verse is "The Unknown," by Elizabeth Berkeley.
Mrs. Berkeley's style is less restrained than that of Mrs. Jordan, and
presents a picture of stark, meaningless horror, the like of which is
not often seen in the amateur press. It is difficult to pass upon the
actual merit of so peculiar a production, but we will venture the
opinion that the use of italics, or heavy-faced type, is not desirable.
The author should be able to bring out all needed emphasis by words, not
printer's devices. The issue concludes with "Inspiration," a poem by
Lewis Theobald, Jun. The form and rhythm of this piece are quite
satisfactory, but the insipidity of the sentiment leaves much to be
desired. The whole poem savours too much of the current magazine style.
* * * * *
=The Coyote= for October is made notable by Editor Harrington's
thoughtful and well compiled article on "Worldwide Prohibition," wherein
an extremely important step in the world's progress is truthfully
chronicled. That legislation against alcohol is spreading rapidly
throughout civilization, is something which not even the densest
champions of "personal liberty" can deny. The utter emptiness of all
arguments in behalf of strong drink is made doubly apparent by the swift
prohibitory enactments of the European nations when confronted by the
emergencies of war, and by the abolition of liquor in a large number of
American states for purely practical reasons. All these things point to
a general recognition of liquor as a foe to governmental and industrial
welfare. Mr. Harrington's style in this essay is clear and in most
respects commendable; though certain passages might gain force and
dignity through a less colloquial manner. In particular, we must protest
against the repeated use of the vulgarism =booze=, a word probably
brought into public favour by the new school of gutter evangelism,
whose chief exponent is the Reverend William Sunday. The verb =to
booze=, =boose=, or =bouse=, meaning "to drink immoderately," and the
adjective =boozy=, =boosy=, or =bousy=, meaning "drunken," are by no
means new to our language, Dryden having written the form =bousy= in
some of his verses; but =booze= as a noun signifying "liquor" is
certainly too vulgar a word for constant employment in any formal
literary composition. Another essay of Mr. Harrington's is "The Divine
Book," a plea for the restoration of the Bible as a source of popular
reading and arbiter of moral conduct. Whatever may be the opinion of the
searching critic regarding the place of the Scriptures in the world of
fact, it is undeniably true that a closer study of the revered volume,
and a stricter adherence to its best precepts, would do much toward
mending the faults of a loose age. We have yet to find a more
efficacious means of imparting virtue and contentment of heart to the
masses of mankind. "Pioneers of New England," an article by Alice M.
Hamlet, gives much interesting information concerning the sturdy
settlers of New Hampshire and Vermont. In the unyielding struggles of
these unsung heroes against the sting of hardship and the asperity of
primeval Nature, we may discern more than a trace of that divine fire of
conquest which has made the Anglo-Saxon the empire builder of all the
ages. In Mr. Harrington's editorial column there is much discussion of a
proposed "International Amateur Press Association," but we fail to
perceive why such an innovation is needed, now that the United has
opened itself unreservedly to residents of all the countries of the
globe.
* * * * *
=Merry Minutes= for November is a clever publication of
semi-professional character, edited by Miss Margaret Trafford of London,
and containing a pleasant variety of prose, verses, and puzzles. "King
of the Nursery Realm," by Margaret Mahon, is a smooth and musical piece
of juvenile verse which excels in correctness of form rather than in
novelty of thought.